The marvelous Michael Ramirez comments succinctly. It moved, but there is no grasp of reality. But never fear, the Democrats did their best. Ms. Pelosi insisted that the best way to create jobs was more unemployment compensation. “President Obama and this Congress were job creators from Day One, saving the country from the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.”

Sorry, Madam Speaker, all those “jobs created” never existed except in the effluent of some Keynesian computer programs. We have quite a few examples now of the effectiveness of very complex computer programs predicting the future even a few years in the future, let alone 25 to 50 years. Didn’t work for climate, didn’t work for Wall Street, and it didn’t work for the economic advisers.

Congressional experts have called the 111th Congress the most productive Congress in a half-century. Our Democratic members took tough votes to support America’s working families, putting the American people before politics and thinking of the next generation, not the next election.

Never has any Congress passed so much far-left partisan legislation, completely ignoring the interests of the American people, in back rooms with locked doors and without any input from Republicans whatsoever. The American people just made it clear that they don’t think that Democrat “accomplishments” were made for their benefit.

This recession did not resemble, in any way, the Great Depression, much as Democrats wanted people to believe that they were nobly fighting something really enormous. And it did not have to linger this long. The stimulus was misdirected and wasted. Instead of doing those things that would help business to recover, Democrats embarked on a vast program of passing everything in the moldy old Democrat wish-list, refusing to let a crisis to go to waste. The obscene spending binge for non-existent ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure projects and useless clean energy fantasies helped out economies in China and Europe, but damaged the American economy even more.

The Wall Street reform did not address the causes of the financial meltdown, and it is unclear if the new regulations will help or hurt. The small business bill will do nothing to help small business, for small businesses need customers, they don’t need to borrow more money. The “historic health insurance reform” has already raised everyone’s costs, and it hasn’t even taken effect yet. People want it repealed in its entirety.

What does hark back to the Great Depression, is the election. Not since 1936 has the House of Representatives faced such a stunning rejection by the American people. If you can write a sentence like this: “And we did all of this while restoring fiscal discipline to the Congress by making the pay-as-you-go rules the law of the land.” you are way off in some fantasy-land. Inauspicious.

After the BP Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on April 20, Inter Secretary Ken Salazar imposed a moratorium on all deepwater drilling. At the same time the Interior Department’s permits for shallow-water drilling slowed by more than half compared to the previous year.

President Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling ended on October 12 , but all that talk of “creating jobs” remains — just talk. The number of permits issued since the end of the drilling moratorium remains stuck at Zero. Ensco Offshore claims that the government has not issued a single permit that would allow the resumption of any previously suspended drilling activities. The issue was to be discussed at a court hearing today.

Since Oct. 12, the government has received one application for a permit to drill a new well and one to drill a sidetrack, as well as three revised applications for permits to drill. All are pending.

The lack of new permits is due, “at least in part” to new regulations that companies must meet in order to obtain a permit. “Operators who play by the rules and clear the higher bar can be allowed to resume,” Salazar said when the moratorium was lifted.

The new government regulations include having containment resources available in the event of a blowout, certifying that rigs have working blowout preventers and standards for cementing wells, and that the CEO of a company responsible for a well has complied with all regulations. There seems to be no plan for getting the industry in the Gulf back to work, and certainly no urgency about it.

Oil rig jobs are high paying jobs, which affects the entire economy of the Gulf region. Many other businesses depend on the drilling industry. There is a “multiplier effect” in reality, and not just in the administration’s Keynesian fantasies.

Thomas Clements who co-owns a machining business was not affected until the government stepped in and shut everything down. Overnight, his business was canceled. He supplies parts for offshore drilling rigs. Because it was the government who shut his business down, BP has turned down claims for compensation. Mr. Clements tells his story in Human Events. His experience explains the interconnected problems and why so many in the Gulf are caught between a rock and a hard place.

It would be nice if the administration which claims to be concerned about jobs would actually do something about it.